OCTOBEE 11, 19181 SCIENCE 371

paper, or that the Bureau of Standards should serve to the same end. Our technical institutions and colleges should,also pay more attention to the manufacturing of paper and should add to their curriculum the manufacture of paper and lectures on the paper industry.

But far more important is it that publishers and libraries and learned institutions should work together in such matters to the end that all publi- cations, books as well as periodicals, to be used and preserved by such institutions, should be printed on paper of good lasting quality. Such publications must have printed on their title-pages the words, "For Library Use." To be sure, pub- lishers will charge more for such copies than for the ordinary ones. The libraries and learned in- stitutions will gladly agree to this. The same would apply to certain newspapers.

I must believe that what has been pointed out above will be sufficient to invite attention to this inost important question; and as the space in these columns is-of unusual value its consideration will not be further touched at this time.

ROBERTI l T ~ ~ s o xSHUFELDT ARMYMEDICALMUSEUM

THE CANONS OF COMPARATIVE ANATOMY

INthe discussion in this journal1 of the so-called canons of comparative antaomy as illustrated in the vessels of angiosperms and Gnetales, Professor E. C. Jeffrey employs his canons (!) in the familiar methods of the believers in schvc-cklichkeit. As such methods in any field of activity have very little effect on the real issues, the miter declines to be drawn into tempting retaliations or into dis- cussions of unnecessary side issues apparently intended as diversions, but proposes to end the matter, so far as he is concerned, with a simple summary of the facts and the oonclusjons which have been d r a m from them on both sides.

1. Two of the canons (recapitulation and conservatism in certain regions) are beauti-fully illustrated in connection with the vessels in question. I n regard to this statement Pro- fessor Jeffrey and I are in entire agreement.

1 SCIENCE,N. S., Vo1. XLVII., Nos. 1214, 1221 and 1231.

2. The porous perforation of the vessel of Gnetum has been evolved by the enlargement and coalescence of circular, haphaeardly-ar- ranged perforations (Ephedra type) which are themselves in turn derived from typical bord- ered pits. I n regard to this statement also Professor Jeffrey and I are apparently in en- tire agreement; a t any rate our disagreement is not based on it.

3. The similar porous perforation of the vessel of higher angiosperms has been evolved by the disappearance of the bars from the perforations of the scalariform type found in lower angiosperms. With this statement Pro- fessor Jeffrey was in entire agreement when his very recent and excellent book (( The Anat- omy of Woody Plants " was written. On page 3'79 of that work he mote, "The vessel with the porous type of perforation is clearly de- rived, as has been demonstrated in an earlier chapter, from the scalariform condition." (See also pages 101 and 102.) I n his latest con- tribution to this discussion he states, however, that in some cases it originates as described in statement (2) for Gnetum. Nevertheless, inasmuch as he gives no instances of this phenomenon in angiosperms, and does not even mention it in his book, we may con-clude that statement (3), which is merely an- other way of expressing his own quoted state- ment, is essentially correct.

4. From (2) and (3) it follows that the porous vessels of angiosperms and Gnetales, though similar, have b&n evolved in entirely different ways and therefore have no genetic connection. They can not, therefore, be used as evidence of relationship between these two great groups of plants. From this statement Professor Jeffrey dissents, apparently believ- ing that it is not a legitimate inference from the given premises. To the writer it appears to be the only logical inference.

W. P, T H O ~ ~ P S O N

QUOTATIONS T H E COORDINATION OF SCIENTIFIC PUBLI-

CATION I N GREAT BRITAIN

THE Faraday Society arranged a meeting to consider the "Coordination of Scientific Pub-

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372 SCIENCE [N. s. VOL. XLVITI. NO. 1241

lication" on May 7 last. The discussion was opened by Sir Robert Hadfield, President of the Society and a member of the Subcom-mittee appointed by the Conjoint Board of Scientific Societies to deal with the "Over- lapping between Scientific Societies." Among others who spoke were Professor Schuster, Dr. R. Mond, Mr. Longridge (president of the Inslitute of Mechanical Engineers) and Mr. Wordingham (president of the Institute of Electrical Engineers). Sir Robert Hadfield's chief suggestion was that there should be a Central Board (such as the Conjoint Board) appointed to receive all scientific papers and to allot them for reading and discussion to the society to which they would be of most in-terest. I n addition the board should circu- larize other societies likely to be interested in order that their members might be aware of what had been done and enabled to attend and take part in the discussion if they so de- sired. This plan would, of course, involve some degree of federation between all the larger societies; a federation which was evi-dently regarded very favorably by those pres- ent at the meeting. It has indeed already taken place in Germany, where a Union of Technical and Scientific Societies, with a roll of some 60,000 members, has been formed more especially to cope to the best advantage with the problems which must arise at the end of the war. I n New York also the United Engineering Societies have a central building and library, provided by the generosity of Andyew Carnegie, where the several societies meet for discussions, and where they are brought into closer contact than is possible with the decentralization which obtains here. Nor should the federation be limited to the United Kingdom alone. The great societies should have Colonial representatives, particu- larly those dealing with problems of an in-dustrial character. I n pre-war days the Iron and Steel Institute had a representative of the German Empire, which was thus kept in touch with English research, but no representative from our own Dominions. With a federation of this kind it might be ~ s s i b l e to maintain a common building (e. g., an enlarged Bur-,

lington House) for meetings and to house a joint library which should contain, in par-ticular, all the publications referred to in the International Catalogue. Several speakers di- lated on this idea, Dr. Mond suggesting that i t should have a staff of translators competent to provide complete translations of papers written in the more difficult languages (e. g., Russian or Japanese) when they were re-quired; while Mr. Longridge went further in desiring a College of Librarians; men able to discuss research with inquirers and not merely to put them on the track of past work, but also to inform them of the work then in actual progress! Less utopian was the de-mand for uniformity in publication. It is most desirable that all Proceedings, Trans-actions, etc., should be printed on the same sized paper and in the sainc type so that col- lectcd papers on any one subject may be bound together. The scheme for the pooling of papers was opposed by the institutions on the ground that they awarded prizes for the best papers submitted to them and that, under the scheme, this incentive to research might dis- appear. Obviously, however, this difficulty might easily be overcome if each society re- tained the right to print any papers sent to them irrespective of their ultimate fate a t the hands of the board. A more serious ob- jection is that a paper is usually written for a particular class of reader. A treatment suitable for the Physical Society would prob- ably not be best for the Iron and Steel In- stitute. Having regard to this fact it seems probabla that a central board would find its most important function in issuing a weekly or monthly list of forthcoming papers with intelligible abstracts, as suggested by Pro-fessor Schuster.-Science Progress.

SCIENTIFIC BOOKS

.Dynamic Ps~chologlj. By ROBERTS ~ s s ~ o s s WOODWORTB. York, Uni-New Columibia versity Press. 1818. Pp. 210.

A critic in the Nation once remarked, "When a statement is obviously false we call i t stimulating; when it has no meaning what-